


Tragic (I Couldn't See Your Smile)

by dulled_dreams



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Altered canon, Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Pain, Reincarnation, can be romance can be friends, character death but not really, i don't think it's worse than canon but be careful, mentions of abuse?, suicide TW, whatever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-07
Updated: 2015-09-07
Packaged: 2018-04-19 11:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,938
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4745102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dulled_dreams/pseuds/dulled_dreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once his sunshine is taken away from him, he makes a wish and tries again.</p><p>But fate plays a joke on him, and again and again, Kaneki only sees a fleeting smile.</p><p>He wants it to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tragic (I Couldn't See Your Smile)

**Author's Note:**

> Formatting is vaguely inspired by iwillstillopenthewindow's "A Hundred or so Hellos". Beta work was done by Nameless_Thunderhead.

The first time they meet, they’re small children, and their mothers are chatting about something inconsequential. Ken hides from the excitable brown haired boy, who is too loud, dressed in mismatched clothes, and bouncing all over. The grey eyed child shudders anxiously. He’s too _different_.

His mother, who’s too busy to deal with him, pushes him toward the happy brown eyed boy, who places his hands on Ken’s shoulders and practically squeals. His smile is cute, and Ken is reminded of a puppy.

“I’m Hide! What’s your name?”

“Kaneki… Ken…” Ken stutters in response, wanting to duck back behind the older women. The smile turns gentler, more reassuring, and he relaxes. Just like some prince in a book, Hide is smiling magically.

“Let’s be friends, Kaneki!” Hide cheers, grinning. He’s missing his front two teeth.

Ken tentatively reaches out and takes it, a shy smile spreading over his face.

The two are inseparable for years after that, and Ken entertains the thought they’ll be together forever. Sitting on the giant whale statue in the playground with his best friend makes him feel invincible. He never wants to stop seeing that smile, not now. Hide laughs at Ken when he stops spacing out, and shows him a new song. It’s perfect, and he rests his head against Hide’s shoulder, watching the stars.

Shortly before term at Kamii starts, Hide is hit by a car. He’s pronounced dead at the scene, and Ken feels his world break around him. Hide, who bleached his hair in middle school to look like a sunflower, who loved music and video games, who was so smart and lively, is gone.

Slumping next to the coffin and refusing to move throughout the entire service, Ken makes a wish. Just one wish.

_Please, one more time. Let me see that smile again._

Someone takes pity on him, but they also laugh.

 

* * *

 

The second time they meet, they don’t know each other for a while. Hide is in middle school, and a kid transfers into his class. He’s quiet, shy, and named Kaneki Ken. Hide can’t shake the feeling of knowing him. The boy is closed off and unapproachable, but Hide makes it his mission to befriend him because there’s the nagging feeling that he _must_.

When Kaneki does open up, it’s beautiful. The other watches him like he’s so gentle, so fragile, like Hide’s the only sunshine in his dark world. The blond later realizes that Kaneki’s world is very dark; his aunt is an abusive bitch, and his cousin’s an asshole.

His new mission is to be Kaneki’s light, so Hide latches on as tight as he can and doesn’t let go.

“Rabbits die of loneliness!” he preaches when his new best friend asks him why. But the brown eyed child isn’t the rabbit: Kaneki is. He can’t be left alone.

A month later, and Hide feels like he is the one dying of loneliness. Kaneki’s aunt has finally beaten him to death, and Hide’s angry, so angry, when she gets out of Tokyo and avoids incarceration. '

He lives the rest of his life with two books he’ll never read sitting on his shelves. They’re called The Black Goat’s Egg and The Metamorphosis, and they were Kaneki’s favorites.

He can’t even bring himself to open them.

 

* * *

 

The third time, they don’t meet, not really. Ken has been trapped in hell for years. His aunt barely lets him go out beyond school, and every minute in this house is fraught with endless berating and snide remarks. He’s twelve, and it’s okay, he’s okay, even if this hurts.

The only person who notices something is wrong is a boy in his class, but Ken brushes him off and shoulders everything himself. It’s okay, he’s okay.

He’s fourteen, and it’s too much, too damn much, and Ken ties a rope around his neck, kicking the stool out from under him. The last thing he sees is a smile, such a bright smile. It’s something he’s never seen from anyone; he wishes he could’ve known who it belonged to.

That fleeting thought makes him yearn for something, but his neck is already broken.

 

* * *

 

_~ One more time, a thousand more times… All I remember is that [smile]. ~_

 

* * *

 

The fourth time, Hide is a CCG inspector, good with a quinque and very, very fast. No ghoul’s gotten the best of him, until now.

The SSS Class rinkaku ghoul is laughing wildly, twisting the one appendage impaled in Hide’s stomach and grinning when he cries out in pain. The blond knows he’s dying, and finally feels the fear that other inspectors know too well.

Hide wishes he could apologize to Juuzou, who is no doubt wondering where the backup he called for is. Hide also wishes that the ghoul was smiling gently instead, but that’s a dumb wish, and he’s already going numb.

 

* * *

 

The fifth time, there is a black haired boy who works at Hide’s favorite coffee shop, and he likes to read on his breaks. Hide wants to talk to him (he’s so very cute), but he can never muster the courage.

After a week or two without seeing him, Hide asks the barista’s coworker where the boy is. The violet eyed waitress shakes her head and says he was killed in a robbery. Her own arm is injured, a bullet having pierced her shoulder.

Hide wonders why this dead boy, whose name he didn’t even know, is affecting him so badly.

 

* * *

 

The sixth time, Ken is twenty two and walking home from Kamii with a wide smile on his face. His teacher has given him a brand new copy of The Black Goat’s Egg, and he can’t wait to reread it, this time without coffee and mildew stained pages.

When he turns into an alley, he sees the ghoul, hunched over an already half devoured man. It turns to him, kakugan glimmering eerily, and before Kaneki Ken dies once again at the hands of a crazed monster, he thinks that those eyes should’ve been brown and warm and _lovely_.

 

* * *

 

The seventh time, Kaneki Ken is twenty three, and the tutor of an easily distracted teen year old named Nagachika Hideyoshi.

He feels like he knows Hide, outside of literature and math problems, but he really doesn’t. Hide passes his classes, and Ken walks out of his life.

That hurts more than he cares to admit.

 

* * *

 

The eighth time, his ward is being devastated by ghouls, and Kaneki Ken is running.

The ten year old stumbles and falls in an alley, and he lies there, sprawled on the ground and sobbing. His father and mother are dead, half the ward is on fire, and the screams are grating at his ears.

Ken was never good at running anyway. He decides to accept his fate like a tragic hero, remaining on the ground until he can hear the laughs of approaching ghouls.

Suddenly, someone hauls him off the ground and forces him to face them. Ken screws his eyes shut, preparing to die, but he realizes it’s a brown haired boy, about his age, who has picked him up.

“What are you doing?!” The other boy cries, shaking Ken. “They’re coming; you have to hide!”

Ken whimpers and shakes his head. He can only see one way to run, and that’s into the fiery street.

The other kid grabs Ken’s hand and tugs him toward the dumpster. He flips open the grimy lid, ignores the disgusting smell, and then somehow picks Ken up and shoves him into it.

Ken realizes in an instant how smart the boy’s idea is. Since the ghouls can only smell the rotting human food in the dumpster, they won’t check in there for a human. Shoving down the bile in his throat and pinching his nose shut, Ken burrows into the trash bags.

The gray eyed boy hears footsteps getting closer. His brown eyed companion immediately shuts the dumpster lid, despite Ken’s shout of “What about you?!”

Ken can’t hear any carnage; in fact, the sounds outside indicate a casual conversation.

The ghoul who had entered the alley leaves, and the lid is pulled open. His savior is smiling, but his eyes are now shining red and black. Ken gasps.

“Don’t worry,” the other kid reassures, his eyes returning to normal. “I’m not gonna eat you. Now come on; let’s get out of here!” He holds out his hand, which is streaked with dirt and blood.

Ken hesitates. He has nothing left in here, but this boy is a ghoul. Even though he saved him today, he could eat him later.

The crying child wipes away his tears and makes a split second decision; he takes the boy’s hand, and they run.

They have five years of tentative bliss, but ghouls don’t get happy endings. On January 27th, Kaneki Ken dies in Nagachika Hideyoshi’s arms, and it’s snowing.

 

* * *

 

The ninth time, Hide is 16 and has made a best friend on Tumblr. They message each other every day, and soon it stops being "oh, you ship that too!" and starts being “how are you?”s and “I’m glad you’re here!”s.

One day, the boy on the other side of the screen stops responding. Hide waits and waits, but his messages go unanswered.

His friend’s blog is deleted, and Hide worries. However, there’s nothing he can do.

He reads the newspaper a few days after, and finds out that a boy in his area has gone missing. His name is Kaneki Ken, and although there’s no proof to indicate it, Hide knows this is his internet friend. The blond aches; he realizes that Kaneki is dead without being told.

The police find the mutilated body in a ditch two weeks later. Hide throws up and asks to try again.

 

* * *

 

The tenth time, Ken is holding on to Hide, watching the snow fall and the CCG members around them only through the corners of his eyes. He’s dead, again, and it’s all Ken’s fucking fault.

He wants to cry, but he holds back and tries to memorize every little detail of Hide. The tiny smile, the sweep of eyelashes over closed eyes, the slightly tanned skin… the half ghoul couldn’t believe he’d ever forgotten those details. His best friend was his most precious person, and here he was forgetting him.

Arima looms before him, face impassive. Ken swallows, setting Hide down.

_Goodbye. I’m sorry… you were my home._

They fight, and he loses. A quinque is impaled into his eye and through his skull, and everything hurts, hurts, hurts. Ken can feel himself forgetting the Hide of now and the Hide of before, but everything else- Rize, Jason, every fight he’s been through- is slipping away too, and that’s not so bad.

Ken’s last thought before the world crashes around him again is that his life really is a tragedy.

 

* * *

 

+1: Sasaki Haise frowns at the sunflowers on the table. Where had Mutsuki even gotten them? He can’t shake the feeling that something is missing. The investigator feels odd looking at those bright, bright flowers. Had he liked sunflowers before? Did someone close to him like them, or remind him of them?

There is the fleeting impression of a smile, of sadness, of home, and he knows his second thought is right. Haise grits his teeth, trying not to cry as pain flares up in his head. He wants to remember his… most precious person?

Then Saiko screams, “MAMAN! THEY’RE BULLYING ME!” and Haise forgets all about it.

_...could he see that smile again?_

_~One more time, ten thousand more times; all I remember is that [smile]~_

**Author's Note:**

> Please don't kill me.
> 
> Also, the song lyrics in there are from Gumi's Donut Hole, except I changed "face" to "smile".
> 
> ...I hope you liked it?


End file.
